The international community “failed us all” during the Tutsi genocide. Rwandan President Paul Kagame spoke this Sunday on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the massacres committed by Hutu extremists who left 800,000 dead in one hundred days.
“Our journey has been long and difficult. Rwanda was completely humiliated by the scale of our loss,” continued the Rwandan president who, in July 1994, at the head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), put an end to the massacres.
“ No one, no one, not even the African Union (AU), can exonerate itself from its inaction in the face of the chronicle of a predicted genocide. »
The international community had been strongly criticized for its inaction before and during the genocide. “It is the international community that has let us all down, whether through contempt or cowardice,” declared Paul Kagame during a speech given to several thousand people at the BK Arena, an ultra-modern multipurpose hall from the capital Kigali.
“No one, no one, not even the African Union (AU), can exonerate itself from its inaction in the face of the chronicle of a predicted genocide. Let us have the courage to recognize it, and to take responsibility for it,” also recognized the President of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat.
President Paul Kagame – who has ruled the country with an iron fist since the end of the genocide – had earlier in the morning lit a flame of remembrance at the Gisozi Memorial.
France’s “responsibilities”
Shortly before, alongside foreign dignitaries, Paul Kagame stood in front of a wreath of flowers, in tribute to the victims of the massacres.
Former American President Bill Clinton, in office at the White House during the massacres, French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné and Secretary of State for the Sea Hervé Berville, born in Rwanda, also attended the ceremony.
On the occasion of this anniversary, French President Emmanuel Macron, who had already recognized in 2021 France’s “responsibilities” in the 1994 genocide, took an additional step, estimating that Paris, “which could have stopped the genocide with its Western and African allies, did not have the will,” according to comments reported by the Elysée on Thursday.